Productivity

Before I dive into how to archive I’d like to give you a brief overview of how our mail system works. We keep a copy of everything in each person’s Inbox, Deleted Items, and other folders on the server. Your Outlook (for Windows) or Entourage (for Mac) program connects to our server and makes sure everything is synced up. (more…)

Sometimes a picture is just better than explaining something to a coworker (or those crazy techs over in ITS). That’s where screen-shots come in.

One option for Windows users is that little PrtScn button floating around somewhere in the upper right part of your keyboard. When you press it, it puts a picture of the whole screen on the Clipboard (if you use two monitors, the picture even includes both screens). If you want just the currently active window (which is far more likely), press Alt-PrtScn. Then you can paste (Ctrl+V) the image in an email, a Word document, or wherever you want it. If PrtScn isn’t convenient enough, there are other options.

It’s easy to find a convenient meeting time for a group if everyone uses Outlook and puts their schedules in their Outlook Calendar (see our post on Outlook Meeting Requests). But what if they don’t, or if your meeting includes people not on the UUA staff?

Today I’ll share a trick I’ve been using to keep myself organized. It relies on a piece of software called Fences (free version) and Windows shortcuts. Fences is a program designed to help you organize icons on your desktop by dividing the desktop into rectangular areas (“fences”) into which you put icons. Even if you don’t want to use it for a to-do list, it’s pretty cool all on its own.

I can make a “fence” just wide enough for one icon, so it looks like a list. All I have to do now is add an icon and it will slide up to the top of my list. I find it’s most useful to create shortcuts to add to the list, so I can have easy access to the file, a reminder to do something about it, and when I’ve completed the task I simply delete the shortcut. Once the shortcut is deleted all the other shortcuts automatically move up in the list, which some how feels more satisfying than simply deleting a shortcut.

To give it a whirl you can grab a copy of fences here and of course if you have any to do list tricks let us know in the comments.

Regrettably, Fences is for Windows only and isn’t as powerful as a dedicated to-do list app like Remember the Milk, Task Coach, or Toodledo. All three of these will work on Windows and Macs and will sync with your iPhone and other PDAs. But Fences is great for some quick desktop organization.